The greatest secret by rhonda byrne [english]

Dedication
Dedicated to all of humanity
May The Greatest Secret free you from all suffering and
bring you everlasting happiness.
That is my intention for you, and for every human
being.

Epigraph
“Of all the things human beings can learn in this life, I
have the greatest news to tell you, the most beautiful
thing to share . . .”
—Mooji

Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Acknowledgments
The Beginning
Chapter 1: Hidden in Plain Sight
Chapter 2: The Greatest Secret: Revealed
Chapter 3: The Reveal Continued
Chapter 4: You’re Dreaming . . . It’s Time to Wake Up
Chapter 5: Freedom from the Mind
Chapter 6: Understanding the Power of Feelings
Chapter 7: The End of Negative Feelings
Chapter 8: No More Suffering
Chapter 9: Dissolving Limiting Beliefs
Chapter 10: Everlasting Happiness
Chapter 11: The World: All Is Well
Chapter 12: The End—There Is No End
The Greatest Secret Practices
Featured in The Greatest Secret
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher

Acknowledgments
The Greatest Secret could not have come into the world
without the help and support of many. First, I wish to
acknowledge and honor the teachers whose illuminating
teachings are featured throughout this book. They epitomize
grace and wisdom, and I am beyond grateful for their presence
and willingness to be a part of this life-transforming book.
To the scientists and doctors featured in this book, my deepest
gratitude for your leading-edge perspectives that humankind
needs to take us out of the dark ages of old paradigms that
don’t work anymore and into the illuminating presence of the
true Infinite Being that we are.
To the members of The Secret team who worked with me on
The Greatest Secret, there are no words that can describe my
gratitude for your dedication and support of this project.
Whenever I announce to the team that I have discovered
something earth-shattering that I must share with the world, I
am sure they take a deep breath, wondering what is going to
come next. But without exception, they open their minds and
lift their consciousness to the level that is required, so as to
provide their invaluable contribution through their roles.
Skye Byrne (my daughter) is The Secret’s editor, my editor,
and my human compass for all of my books. To edit my
books, Skye needs to understand all the teachings at the
highest possible level to ensure that I stay on track and fulfill
my greatest desire—to write as simply as possible so that
millions will be set free from suffering and be in joy. To work
on the early stages of a book is no mean feat, and there isn’t
another person on the planet who could do it to the level of
brilliance and perfection with which she does it. To Skye

comes my deepest and immeasurable gratitude, as her guiding
hand can be found on every page.
Another hand you will find on every page is that of our
creative director, Nic George. The beautiful design of this
book is due to his extraordinary creative abilities, his beautiful
creative eye and hand, and his deep intuitive sense. Creating a
new book with Nic is a process of sheer joy, and I am blessed
to have him, along with Josh Hedland, who worked side by
side with Nic on the cover and interior of The Greatest Secret.
Glenda Bell worked diligently with the teachers, contributors,
and their teams so that the teachings would be accurately
portrayed in the book. In a mighty effort, she worked selflessly
and enthusiastically around the clock, through the nights and
weekends, to connect with all time zones, for which I am very
grateful.
Thank you to the rest of the amazing Secret team: Don Zyck,
our CFO, who is always ready for the next quantum leap with
our company and who ushers us through the legal and
financial requirements, keeping everything flowing toward our
intention; Josh Gold, who manages all of our social media
platforms brilliantly and who will ensure that every country in
the world knows of this book; Marcy Koltun-Crilley, my
dearest friend who has been on this journey with me from the
beginning and who I am honored to say is an integral part of
The Secret team; and producer Paul Harrington, who has been
with me since a decade before The Secret even came into
being. Paul encouraged and inspired me to write The Greatest
Secret in the early stages, when it seemed almost impossible
that this precious truth could be conveyed simply. Paul also
produced The Greatest Secret audiobook, working beside Tim
Patterson in post-production and bringing the revelatory words
in this book to life in audio form.
My gratitude to the amazing HarperCollins team, whose
excitement in working on this book is contagious. Thank you
to the wonderful Judith Curr, president and publisher of
HarperOne, and my fantastic editor, Gideon Weil, who were
both such a joy to work with. Thank you also to Brian Murray,
Terri Leonard, Yvonne Chan, Suzanne Quist, Laina Adler,

Edward Benitez, Aly Mostel, Melinda Mullin, Adrian Morgan,
Dwight Been, Anna Brower, Lucile Culver, and Rosie Black.
Thank you to the international HarperCollins team: Chantal
Restivo-Alessi, Emily Martin, Juliette Shapland, Catherine
Barbosa-Ross, and Julianna Wojcik. Thank you to the
HarperCollins UK team: Charlie Redmayne, Kate Elton,
Oliver Malcolm, Katya Shipster, Helen Rochester, Simon
Gerratt, and Julie MacBrayne. And thank you to the
HarperCollins Global Publishing Partners: Brasil, Espanol,
Mexico, Iberica, Italia, Holland, France, Germany, Polska,
Japan, and Nordic.
Special thanks to the following people who helped me with
their invaluable feedback: Peter Foyo, Kim Wall, John Wall,
Hannah Hodgden, Marcy Koltun-Crilley, Mark Weaver, and
Fred Nalder.
To my family, Peter Byrne, Oku Den, Kevin (Kid) McKemy,
Henley McKemy, Savannah Byrne Cronin, and my daughter
Hayley, who was the force that set me on my incredible
journey in search of the truth sixteen years ago. To my dearest
sisters, Pauline Vernon, Glenda Bell, and Jan Child, thank you
for loving me and for allowing me to love you.
And finally, thank you to my amazing and beautiful teacher,
whose words and teachings of the truth over the past four
years have radically transformed my life and helped me to see
clearly who I really am. This precious book is in your hands
because of her unlimited giving and her patience in helping
direct me home. My love for her knows no boundary.

The Beginning
After the release of The Secret in 2006, my life became what I
can only describe as a dream life. Through practicing The
Secret principles religiously, my mind had become
predominantly positive, and so my life reflected that positive
state in my happiness, health, relationships, and finances. I
also found myself with a natural love and gratitude for
everything in life.
But despite all of that, something inside me continued to urge
me on to seek more of the truth; something propelled me to
continue my search, though for what, I didn’t yet know.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, I had begun what was to
become a ten-year journey! It started with studying the
teachings of an ancient tradition in Europe, the Rose Cross
Order, and I studied their profound teachings for many years. I
also spent some years studying Buddhism, the many works of
the Christian mystics, theology, Hinduism, Taoism, and
Sufism. After I studied the ancient traditions and their
historical teachings, my search turned back toward the present
time, and I started following recent teachers like J.
Krishnamurti, Robert Adams, Lester Levenson, and Ramana
Maharshi, as well as some teachers still living today.
Throughout my journey I learned many things that are
unknown to the public at large, and while they were
fascinating, none of them made me feel that I had found the
truth.
As the years passed by, I even considered that searching might
be my life forevermore. I didn’t realize it then, but I was
looking for the truth in the world, when all along it was closer
to me than I could ever have imagined.

Ten years after my search began, in early January of 2016, a
challenging situation arose in my life that caused me to feel
deep disappointment. I was surprised at the depth of negative
emotion that I felt. How could I feel so bad when I usually felt
so good? But that disappointing situation was to become the
greatest gift in my search for the truth.
To turn my disappointment around, I grabbed my iPad and
watched an interview on Conscious TV with a man called
David Bingham. At the time of the interview David was not a
teacher but was just an ordinary everyday person like you and
me, with one difference: after twenty years of searching, he
had discovered the truth!
I watched the interview, and afterward I listened to a podcast
that David recommended. I listened intently to the podcast,
and during it I heard that most people overlook this discovery
—not because it’s difficult, but because it’s so simple. Then, I
was able to speak with David on the phone, and during our
conversation he said, “Look at what I’m pointing to. It’s right
here.” And suddenly I saw what I had been searching for. It
was so simple, and it was right here. Just like that—after ten
years—my search ended! I can say without any hesitation that
the happiness and joy I felt from this discovery was worth
every second of my years-long journey. Even if it had taken
my entire life to discover it, it would have been worth it.
In the end, just one simple discovery was the whole truth that I
had been looking for, which is actually what everyone is
looking for, whether they realize it or not. And once I had seen
the truth, I could see that it was everywhere. Everything I had
been reading and learning for ten years contained it; I just
didn’t have the eyes to see it at that time. I had been searching
for years, from one tradition and philosophy to the next, and
what I had been looking for had been right in front of me all
along!
From the moment I made the discovery, I knew that there was
nothing more important than to understand this discovery
more, live it completely, and then share it with the world. My
hope was to show the way out for those experiencing hardship,
to help end the pain and suffering that so many are enduring,

and to shine a light to a future where we can live without
anxiety or fear.
I had already been putting notes from everything I was
learning in a folder on my computer that was entitled “My
Next Book.” It was an intuitive sense that inspired me to
record everything I was discovering, in the hope that I could
eventually share it with the world. Those cherished notes,
when I had finished collating them, became the foundation of
this book.
Just two months after discovering the truth through David
Bingham, I met someone else who was to have an enormous
effect on my life, and on the creation of this book. She walked
into a room I was in at a retreat, and when I walked up to talk
to her, her presence had such a profound effect on me that any
trace of negativity from my entire life was gone in an instant!
She had been a student of one of my all-time favorite teachers,
the late Robert Adams. I knew instantly that she was my
teacher, the one who would help me fully realize and live the
truth in this lifetime, and she has remained my teacher for the
past four years. Her teachings are straightforward, beautifully
simple, and she never hesitates to tell me if I’m going in the
wrong direction. While her name remains anonymous at her
request, I have shared many of her life-changing teachings that
propelled my life into one of constant joy and happiness. My
deepest wish is that they will do the same for you.
She, along with the other teachers featured in this book, helped
lead me out of the darkness of ignorance by illuminating this
one discovery. Every one of them helped me to understand the
truth that I had discovered more deeply and to live from it
more fully, and the love I feel for them is infinite. Their words
that changed my life forever are featured throughout this book.
With every step you take through this book, you will become
happier and your life will become more effortless, and that
happiness and effortlessness will continue to increase without
any end. Any fear and uncertainty of the future will no longer
plague you. Any anxiety and stress about your daily struggles
or world events will dissolve. You can be free of every form of

suffering that you might be experiencing right now. And you
will be.
While there are certainly some huge revelations throughout
these pages, there are also many simple practices to
immediately put those revelations into practice. The practices
alone are worth their weight in gold. I know. I am the living
proof of how well they work.
The Secret showed you how to create anything you want to be,
do, or have. Nothing has changed—it is as true today as it ever
was. This book reveals the greatest discovery a human being
can ever make and shows you the way out of negativity,
problems, and what you don’t want, to a life of permanent
happiness and bliss.
It simply doesn’t get any better than this. It is my greatest joy
to welcome you to The Greatest Secret.

Chapter 1
Hidden in Plain Sight
Of the billions of people on our planet, only a few have
discovered the truth. Those few are completely free from the
turmoil and negativity of life and live in permanent peace and
happiness. For the rest of us, whether we realize it or not,
we’ve been in search of this truth unceasingly every single day
of our lives.
Despite the fact that this great secret has been written about
and alluded to by many great sages, prophets, and religious
leaders throughout history, the majority of us still remain
ignorant of the single greatest discovery we can ever make.
Among those who have shared this discovery with us are
Buddha, Krishna, Lao Tzu, Jesus Christ, Yogananda,
Krishnamurti, and the Dalai Lama.
While they each have different teachings that were appropriate
for their time, they all refer to the same truth—the truth about
us and the truth behind our world.
“In some religions this truth is expressed less openly and
clearly than in others, but it is nevertheless the truth that lies at
the heart of every religion.”
Michael James, from Happiness and the Art of Being
This great secret is in plain view for every one of us to see. It’s
closer to us than our very breath, yet we’ve missed it! Ancient

traditions knew that to hide a secret it should be put in plain
sight, where no one will think to look for it. And that’s exactly
where The Greatest Secret lies.
“Thus it is referred to in the Kashmir Shaivite tradition as ‘the
greatest secret, more hidden than the most concealed and yet
more evident than the most evident of things.’”
Rupert Spira, from Being Aware of Being Aware
We’ve missed the truth for thousands of years because we’ve
not looked at what is right in front of us. We’ve become easily
distracted by our problems, the drama in our lives, the
comings and goings of the events in the world, and we’ve
missed the greatest discovery we can make that is right here
before us—a discovery that can take us out of suffering and
into lasting happiness.
What secret can possibly be so life-changing? What single
discovery can ever end suffering, or bring everlasting peace
and happiness?
Quite simply, a secret that reveals who you really are.
You might think you know who you are, but if you think
you’re an individual person with a name, who’s a certain age,
from a particular race, who has a profession, a family history,
and various life experiences, you will be stunned by the
revelation of who you really are.
“The only way that someone can be of help to you is by
challenging your ideas.”
Anthony de Mello, S.J., from Awareness: Conversations with the Masters
We’ve all accepted many false ideas and beliefs throughout
our lives, and those false ideas and beliefs have kept us
enslaved. We’ve been told that there’s limitation and lack in
the world—that there’s not enough money, time, resources,
love, or health: “Life is short,” “You’re only human,” “You
have to work hard and struggle to get somewhere in life,”
“We’re running out of resources,” “The world is in turmoil,”
“The world needs saving.” But the moment you see the truth,
those mistruths will crumble, and your happiness will arise
from the ruins.

Perhaps you’re thinking, “My life is going swimmingly, and so
why would I even want to know The Greatest Secret?”
To quote the wonderful late Anthony de Mello, S.J.:
“Because your life is a mess!”
You may disagree. I certainly didn’t think my life was a mess
either until Anthony de Mello defined exactly what he meant.
Do you ever get upset? Ever get stressed? Ever worry? Ever
feel anxious, offended, or hurt? Ever feel sad, down in the
dumps, or despondent? Are you ever unhappy or in a bad
mood? If you experience any of these emotions at any time,
then according to Anthony de Mello, your life is a mess!
You might think it’s normal to be plagued by negative
emotions throughout your day, but life isn’t supposed to be
that way. You can live your life utterly free of hurt, upset,
worry, and fear, and exist in continuous happiness.
Life is showing us there’s a way out of suffering through every
single challenging circumstance we experience, especially the
very chal lenging circumstances. But we don’t see it. We’re
lost in our problems, and we miss the very thing that is right in
front of us that is the way out of all problems forever!
“We seek happiness in experience after experience,
relationship after relationship, therapy after therapy, workshop
after workshop—even ‘spiritual’ ones, which sound so
promising but never address the root cause of suffering:
ignorance of our true nature.”
Mooji, from White Fire, second edition
Whenever we suffer, it’s because we’ve believed something
about ourselves that isn’t true; we’ve mistaken our own
identity. All of humanity’s suffering comes down to a case of
mistaken identity.
The truth is, you’re not a person who has no control over what
happens to you and your life. You’re not a person who has to
slave at a job you don’t like, only to die at the end of it all.
You’re not a person who has to struggle from paycheck to
paycheck. You’re not a person who needs to prove yourself or
who needs anybody else’s approval. The truth is, you are not

really a person at all. You are most certainly having the
experience of being a person, but in the bigger picture it’s not
who you are.
“It isn’t the way it appears to be. You aren’t what you think
you are.”
Jan Frazier, from The Freedom of Being
“Sometimes we’re targeting the symptoms in life but the real
cause in life we’re missing—the understanding and
recognition of our true nature. This is the one medicine for
everything.”
Mooji
“All the unhappiness, discontent and misery that we
experience in our life is caused only by our ignorance or
confused knowledge of who or what we really are. Therefore
if we want to be free of all forms of misery and unhappiness,
we must free ourself from our ignorance or confused
knowledge of what we really are.”
Your gauge of how your life is going is your level of
happiness. How happy are you? Are you genuinely happy all
of the time? Do you live within a continuous background of
happiness? You’re supposed to be happy all the time.
Happiness is you. It’s your true nature. It’s who you really are.
“The thing that every one of us is looking for in this world is
exactly the same thing. Every being, even the animals are
looking for it. And what is it that we’re all looking for—
happiness with no sorrow. A continuous happiness with no
taint whatsoever of sorrow.”
Lester Levenson, from Will Power audio
Every action we take, every decision we make, is because we
think we will be happier from it. It’s not a coincidence that
we’re all looking for happiness; in our search for happiness,
we are actually looking for ourselves without realizing it!
It’s not possible to find lasting happiness through material
things. Every material thing appears and eventually
disappears, so if you vest your happiness in a material thing,

your happiness will disappear when the material thing
disappears. There’s nothing wrong with material things (they
are wonderful, and you deserve to have whatever you want in
life), but it’s a major breakthrough when you realize that you’ll
never find lasting happiness in them. If material things brought
us happiness, then when we receive something that we really
wanted, the happiness would never leave us. But it’s not the
case. Instead, we experience a fleeting happiness, and within a
very short amount of time we’re back to where we started
from—a state of wanting more things in an effort to feel happy
again.
There’s only one way to find lasting, permanent happiness—it
is to find out who you really are, because your true nature IS
happiness.
“The world is so unhappy because it is ignorant of the true
Self. Man’s real nature is happiness. Happiness is inborn in the
true Self. Man’s search for happiness is an unconscious search
for his true Self . . . When a man finds it, he finds a happiness
which does not come to an end.”
Ramana Maharshi
“The only real purpose of being here on this earth is to learn or
to re-remember our original natural state of no limitations.”
Lester Levenson, from Will Power audio
“The discovery of our true Self has the power to transform the
darkness of ignorance into the light of pure understanding. It is
the most profound, important and radical discovery. It is a tree
that bears fruit immediately. When we realize who we are—
the one experiencing and perceiving the world—so many
things will be set right. There are not many things to know if
truth is what you seek. It’s not volumes of knowledge that are
required—it’s to come to the recognition of the one true Self
that you are.”
Mooji
Remembering who you really are has been given many names
over the centuries. Enlightenment, self-realization, self-
discovery, illumina tion, awakening, remembering. You
probably think “enlightenment” can’t be for you (“I’m just a

normal person”), but you couldn’t be further from the truth.
This discovery—this happiness, this freedom—is who you are,
so how can it not be for you?
“Open yourself to the possibility that you can experience the
truth of what you are, this very moment. How, you may ask?
By noticing that the only obstacle in the way is your
imagination—your imagined opposition.”
My teacher
“We are free, and we don’t know it. It feels the furthest thing
from possible, that it could be so. We’d swear we’re at the
mercy of what goes wrong, what goes right. And yet (here is
the truth), freedom is right here.”
“Self-realization is possible for someone who’s had no
education and it can also be possible for a king. There are no
preconditions to self-realization. Self-realization isn’t just for
those who’ve undergone years of spiritual practice—it’s
possible for someone who’s been drinking and smoking all the
time.”
David Bingham, from Conscious TV
What Will Your Life Be Like?
“I’m talking about something that hardly anyone has yet
experienced. How can I describe it? No limits on anything in
any direction whatsoever. The ability to do anything for the
mere thought of it. Yet it is more than that. Imagine the highest
joy you can have and multiply by a hundred.”
Lester Levenson, from No Attachments, No Aversions
When you fully recognize who you are, you will have a life
without problems, without upset, hurt, worry, or fear. You will
be free from the fear of death and will never again be
controlled or tortured by your mind. False ideas and beliefs
will dissolve. In their place will be clarity, happiness, joy,
peace, infinite fun and wonder—every moment a delight. You
will know you are safe and secure no matter what.

“And when we recognize this . . . ultimate happiness is
established permanently, and forever. And with its
establishment comes immortality, unlimitedness,
imperturbable peace, total freedom, and everything else that
everyone is seeking.”
Lester Levenson, from Happiness Is Free, volumes 1–5
When you fully recognize who you are, life becomes effortless
—everything you need seems to appear without any effort
from you. There’s an ease and a flow that take over your life.
A life of lack and limitation is over forever. You come to know
the ultimate power you have over everything in the world.
When you fully recognize who you are, suffering and struggle
will be gone, and fear and negative emotions will dissolve.
The mind will quiet. You will be filled with joy, positivity,
fulfillment, a sense of abundance, and an imperturbable peace.
This will be your life.
From the words of Jan Frazier, a mother and literary teacher:
“Imagine this: Whatever has weighed on you suddenly no
longer weighs. It may still be there, a fact in your life, but it
has no mass, no gravity. All that has ever troubled you is now
just a feature of the landscape, like a tree, a passing cloud.
Every bit of emotional and mental turmoil has ceased: the
entire burden, some form of which has been with you as long
as you can remember. A thing familiar as your closest friend—
as much a part of you as the language you speak, the color of
your skin—is utterly, inexplicably gone. Into the startling
emptiness flows a quiet joy that buoys you morning, noon, and
night, that goes everywhere you go, into any kind of
circumstance, even into sleep. Everything you undertake
happens effortlessly. You are happy, but for no reason. Nothing
bothers you. You feel no stress. When a problem arises, you
know what to do, you do it, and then you let it go. People that
used to drive you crazy no longer do. While you feel
compassion for others’ suffering, you don’t suffer yourself.
Activities that used to be tedious are fun. You don’t need
therapy; you don’t get bored, anxious, or moody. Except when
needed for a task, your mind is at rest. Your life is entirely
fulfilled—without your having to do anything to fulfill it, . . .

you know that no matter what challenge you are handed—for
the rest of your life—the peace will sustain. Never again will
you be afraid, desperate, lonely. Whatever comes your way,
this causeless joy will hold. Imagine it.”
Jan Frazier, from When Fear Falls Away
This is your life with The Greatest Secret. This is your destiny.

CHAPTER 1 Summary
Whether we realize it or not, we’ve been in search of The
Greatest Secret unceasingly every single day of our lives.
This great secret is in plain view for every one of us to see,
yet we’ve missed it.
We’ve missed the truth for thousands of years because we
are distracted by our problems, the drama in our lives, the
comings and goings of the events in the world.
We’ve accepted many false ideas and beliefs throughout our
lives, and they have kept us enslaved.
Whenever we suffer, it’s because we’ve mistaken our own
identity.
Humanity is suffering from a misunderstanding of our true
nature.
You are having the experience of being a person, but in the
bigger picture it’s not who you are.
You’re supposed to be happy all the time. Happiness is your
true nature.
Discovering who you really are has been given many
names: enlightenment, self-realization, self-discovery,
awakening, remembering.
Open yourself to the possibility that you can experience the
truth of what you are, this very moment.
When you fully recognize who you are, you will experience
a life without problems, upset, hurt, worry, or fear, and you
will be filled with joy, positivity, fulfillment, abundance, and
peace.

Chapter 2
The Greatest Secret: Revealed
“So close you can’t see it.
So subtle your mind can’t understand it.
So simple you can’t believe it.
So good you can’t accept it.”
Loch Kelly, from Shift into Freedom regarding the Shangpa Kagyu Tibetan Buddhist tradition
Why is it so few have discovered the truth? Why haven’t the majority of us realized
who we are? How can billions of people have missed something so vitally important
to our happiness?
We’ve missed discovering The Greatest Secret because of one small obstacle: a
belief! Just a single belief has prevented us from making the greatest discovery we
can make. That belief is that we are our body and our mind.
You Are Not Your Body
“We came into this world to be a body in order to learn that we are not a body.”
Just as you use a car to get from one location to another, your body is a vehicle you
use to move around and to experience the world.
“If you have a car, you do not say you are the car. Why then, if you have a body, do
you say you are the body?”
Being material, your body isn’t conscious. It doesn’t know it’s a body, but “you”
know it’s a body. Your toe doesn’t know it’s a toe, your wrist doesn’t know it’s a
wrist, your head doesn’t know it’s a head, and your brain has no idea it’s a brain, but
“you” know each and every part of your body. How could you be the body when
you know all the different parts, and yet not one of them knows you?
It’s probing questions like these that enabled the great beings of the past to unravel
the mystery behind who we really are.
“The worst habit we have gotten into over the millenniums is that we believe we are
this body.”

“We have forgotten what we are, and we have identified ourselves with objects. I am
this body, therefore I’m going to die.”
Francis Lucille
“You fear that if the body isn’t, you are not.”
Lester Levenson
Believing you’re just your body creates the biggest fear of humanity, the fear of
death: when your body dies, you fear you will no longer exist. It’s like a dark cloud
hanging over your life.
“If you want immortality—stop holding on to the body.”
It’s good news that you’re not your body, because your body is going to come to an
end one day, as all material things do. The world is completely made up of material
things, and not one of those things will last, including your body, which appears and
disappears through the process of birth and death. What you actually are never dies!
“What you truly are cannot die. The body will die, but the body is not what you
are.”
Mooji
“We have free will to identify with the body or identify with who we really are.
Body equals pain and what you are equals infinite joy.”
Your way out of all difficulties begins with letting go of the belief that you are your
body.
You Are Not Your Mind
The voice in your head is not you, yet you’ve probably believed it is you for most of
your life. While the voice in your head sounds like you, seems to know a lot about
you, and has become very familiar to you, it’s definitely not you. That voice in your
head is your mind, and you are not your mind.
“The mind is a collection of thoughts that constantly appear and disappear.”
Peter Lawry
“If there are no thoughts, then there is no mind. Mind is only thought.”
Check for yourself. Where is your mind if there is no thought? Your mind isn’t
there.
“There’s nothing inside but thoughts and feelings, memories and sensations, but are
you a thought? Are you a feeling?”
Rupert Spira, from a public talk
If you were a thought—let’s say, a frustrated thought—then you would disappear
when the frustrated thought disappeared. You are not a thought, a sensation, or a
feeling, because when they end you would end too, but you’re still here after they
end. You are here before a thought, you are here before a feeling or sensation, and
you remain perfectly intact after they’ve gone. It’s fairly obvious when you look at

it. Certainly, we do experience thoughts, feelings, and sensations, but we are none of
those things.
In some ways it’s easy to understand how we’ve missed seeing who we really are,
because the body and mind are a very convincing combination. Our mind keeps up a
constant tirade of thoughts, most of which include the word “I,” as though the mind
is us. And you may be surprised to learn that all our bodily sensations come from
the mind, too, which reinforces our belief that we are our body.
“How others see you contributes to your sense of self. When things happen, they
seem to happen ‘to’ you, or you may bring them about . . . You care what happens
because of its effect on you. You ‘hold’ yourself with a wish to keep yourself safe
and in a good light. You certainly do seem real.”
Jan Frazier, from The Great Sweetening: Life After Thought
It’s not that you don’t have a body and a mind; it’s just that they are not the real you.
Just like your car, they’re simply finely tuned instruments you’re using to
experience the material world.
“Identifying with the body and mind is the only thing that is covering up who you
truly are. It’s this misidentification that is veiling your true Self.”
Mooji
Are You Really the Person You Think You
Are?
“Considering all the effort given to bolstering the ego—the emphasis on self-esteem,
reputation, achievement, physical appearance, material acquisition—it’s a miracle
awakening ever happens at all.”
The ego, the imagined self, the pretend self, the separate self, and the psychological
self are a few of the names that teachers and sages have given for our mistaken
identity. All of these descriptions refer to a body and a mind that together make up
what we call a person. When we refer to ourselves, most of us are referring to this
person that we think we are.
“A person is what you experience, it is not what you are.”
Mooji
“There’s no such thing as a person. If you say, ‘I’m a person,’ then you have to say
which one—there was a baby once upon a time, there was a teenager, there was a
toddler . . . and then this whole process will be over soon.”
Deepak ChopraTM, M.D.
Your personality is constantly changing, so if your personality is you, which person
are you? Are you the angry person, the loving person, the frustrated person, the
irritated person, or the kind person? You probably think you’re all of them, but you
can’t be all of them because if you were, the angry person would never disappear; it
would always be here. Or if the frustrated person were really you, when the
frustrated person disappeared, a bit of you would disappear with it. But that doesn’t
happen, does it? You’re here before the angry person appears, and you’re here after
the angry person disappears. You’re here before the frustrated person appears, and

you’re here after they disappear. Clearly you are not your changing moods or
personality.
“Personality is a useful tool, but it cannot define who you are. Who you are lies far
beyond who you think you are.”
Jac O’Keeffe
“The biggest obstacle to discovering the truth of who we essentially are is the belief
that I am a cluster of thoughts, memories, feelings and sensations. Together these
form an illusory self or entity. The belief that I am this entity is the only obstacle.
All our psychological problems are due to this imaginary self. It always comes down
to mistaking ourselves for this.”
Rupert Spira, from a public talk
“The person only seems to exist because of the persistent and unquestioned belief
that there is an actual ‘person’ here. But the person, or ego, can’t exist without the
belief in it. It’s only imagination. In truth, there’s no person at all. The only resident
of this house of the body is the pure Self, which is what you are. The rest is all made
up. There are not two tenants in this body, there’s only ever been one. Belief in ego
gives a sense of reality, but this is not a fact, only a fiction.”
Mooji
What’s the problem with believing we’re an ego or a person?
We feel small and extremely vulnerable. We’re afraid of bad things happening to us.
We’re afraid of illness, getting old, and dying. We’re afraid of losing the things we
have, and not getting the things we want. We live in a state of lack, believing there’s
“not enough”: not enough money, not enough time, not enough energy, not enough
love, health, or happiness, and not enough life. And even worse, we believe we’re
not enough. None of this is true—in fact, it is the very opposite of the truth—but we
can never have true lasting happiness while we hold on to the belief that we’re only
a person.
“The tragedy and comedy of the human condition is that we spend most of our lives
thinking, feeling, acting, perceiving and relating on behalf of an illusory self.”
Rupert Spira, from The Ashes of Love
“The ego isn’t who you are. But it makes so much racket you can’t hear who you
really are. If you keep it going, if you feed and water the ego, it’s madness.”
Jan Frazier, from Opening the Door
“I think everyone is suffering from person poison . . . living life too personally,
perceiving life too personally, taking things too personally. When you’re responding
to life in a personal mode it is a form of blindness. You don’t see things in their
correct light.”
Mooji
You are most certainly experiencing a body, experiencing a mind, and having the
experience of being a person, but these are actually the least parts of you, and
ultimately they are not you, because when they end, you do not end.
“There is ‘no people’ in people.”
Shakti Caterina Maggi
But there is a real you.

“Why is it so hard to see through the ego, to let it go—to stop believing in the
solidity of the little guy? Why do we hold on to this apparently real self, when
beneath and around and above and swimming all through it is this gorgeous other
reality that really is real, that can be counted on for sustenance, for perfect
peacefulness? Why deny ourselves this, for the sake of something so paltry by
comparison—for a thing that causes so much trouble, even pain?”
Big Pretenders
Your thoughts, feelings, sensations, and beliefs seamlessly work together to
convince you you’re a person. We’re all big pretenders. We’re pretending we’re very
small. We’re pretending we’re very limited. We’re pretending we’re a small, limited
person who is born, lives for a time, dies, and that’s the end of us. But nothing could
be further from the truth!
“We are self-obsessed with an imaginary character that doesn’t exist.”
Shakti Caterina Maggi
We could say that this imaginary character is exactly like a movie character. We
know the actor playing the character exists, but does the movie character know that
the actor exists? No, the movie character is imaginary.
We cement our belief that we’re a person with every thought. If you check on any
thought, you’ll find that there’s a “me” at the center of every one of them. Those
thoughts centered around the “me” you believe yourself to be affirm over and over
again that you’re a little, limited person.
When you believe the voice in your head is who you are, you automatically believe
everything it says; you believe all the thoughts that your mind generates.
Thoughts like:
“I’m getting old.”
“I’m too tired.”

“I’m not good enough.”
“I can’t do it.”
“I don’t have enough time.”
“I’m not as healthy as I used to be.”
“I don’t have enough money.”
“I’m not smart enough.”
“My eyesight is not as good as it used to be.”
“I don’t feel loved.”
“He or she doesn’t approve of me.”
“I don’t deserve it.”
“I’m scared of dying.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
These thoughts are all limitations, imposed on you by your mind. Who you really
are is unlimited, which means absolutely nothing has power over you!
My teacher says that we’re practicing being small through constant limited thoughts
(like the ones I just listed), and if we were not prac ticing being a small, limited
person, we would see the truth of who we really are.
Everything about a “person” is the very opposite of who you really are. The person
is imperfect. The real you is perfect. The person is temporary and limited. The real
you is permanent and unlimited. The person is born and dies. The real you is never
born and never dies. The person is personal and unstable. The real you is impersonal
and always stable. The person has changing moods. The real you is constant
happiness and peace. The person is full of judgments and opinions. The real you is
allowing and accepting of everything. The person gets sick and becomes old. The
real you is not subject to aging, and sickness can never touch you. The person
suffers. The real you is free of all pain and suffering. The person dies. The real you
exists for all eternity.
Trading Unhappiness for Truth
There’s only one way to have a blissful life with lasting happiness, and that is to
know your true nature. There’s only one way out of a life plagued with problems,
negativity, and discord, and that is to know the truth of who you really are.
“The real you is infinitely grand and glorious, whole, perfect, and in total peace, and
you are blinding yourself to this by assuming that you are a limited ego. Drop the
blinder, the ego, and be forever in perfect peace and joy. When you have found
yourself—you will have everything.”
“Life is not about solving lots of little problems because they will never end. Life
points us to the one essential thing that has been overlooked—our own true and
unchanging self. Mankind as a whole is living largely in the mistaken idea that we
are fundamentally a person with a body as opposed to our true Self.”
Mooji

“There may be tragedy in the ‘story’ of our lives, but in truth, there is no tragedy
happening to us. Ultimately, the story is only there to teach us this distinction. The
moment we take the lesson even the story changes to reveal itself as beauty, love,
and intelligence. Do not be attached to the concept that misery is unavoidable. As
long as we are attached to this concept, there will be misery.”
Francis Lucille
“In the biblical parable, the man who is identified with the body/mind is the man
who built his house on sand. To realize one’s true nature is to build one’s house on
rock.”
David Bingham
There’s no search to find the truth because it is what you already are. How could
you search for yourself? It’s only that the majority of us have been constantly
looking away from our true selves, rather than looking at who we are.
Have you ever looked at one of those pictures where there are two images in the one
picture? When you first look at the picture, you can see one image clearly, but at
first you can’t see the second image. You try, but the second image seems to elude
you due to your focus on the first image.
You have to change your perspective and soften your gaze ever so slightly to see the
other image come into view.
In Rubin’s famous picture, at first either you see two people looking at each other, or
you see a vase. To see both images clearly you have to shift the way you’re looking
at the picture.
For most of our lives we’ve been looking at ourselves from the perspective that we
are a body and mind—that we are a person. But to see clearly who we are, just as for
Rubin’s painting, we have to shift our perspective—ever so slightly.
The Reveal

Let me ask you one simple question.
Are you aware?
Your answer must be “yes,” otherwise you wouldn’t be aware of the question I just
asked you. Let me ask you again.
Are you aware?
Yes, you’re aware. You were aware as a baby, through your childhood, your teenage
years, and throughout adulthood. You’ve been aware your entire life.
Awareness is and has been the only constant in your life. Your body keeps changing,
your mind keeps changing, thoughts, feelings, and sensations all keep changing, but
the one thing that has never changed is your awareness of it all.
And that awareness is who you really are.
You are Awareness.
“You are it. It’s so close you cannot see it. You look through its eyes at the world
around you.”
“When we say ‘I,’ we’ve been conditioned to believe that we’re referring to the
body, when really ‘I’ is referring to Awareness.”
David Bingham
You are not a body, a mind, or a bundle of thoughts, feelings, memories, or
sensations. You are the one who is aware of your body, your mind, your thoughts,
feelings, memories, and sensations. You are Awareness itself.
“The moment you meet Awareness something in you recognizes it.”
Mooji
You’re aware of reading this book. You’re aware of the sounds around you. You’re
aware of the room you’re in. You’re aware of your name. You’re aware of your body
and the clothes on your body, your breathing, and bodily sensations. You’re aware of
the roof of your mouth, the soles of your feet, and your fingers. You’re aware of
your mind, the thoughts in your head, and your feelings and moods.
In fact, you couldn’t know or experience any of life at all without Awareness.
You Are the Awareness That Is Aware of
Everything
Awareness is what is aware of every single life experience you have. It’s not the
mind or the body that is aware of your life. You—the Awareness that you are—are
aware of the mind, thoughts, and the body, and anything you are aware of cannot be
you.
The teacher Sailor Bob Adamson points out that we know we exist—of that we have
no doubt. Well, the only way we know that we exist is our awareness that we exist.
We make the mistake of believing our awareness that we exist comes from the mind
or the body, but that is not true. Our awareness that we exist is what we truly are, not
the mind or the body.

Just for a moment, imagine you have no body or mind.
Take away your body.
Take away your mind.
Take away your name.
Take away your life story, which is your entire past.
Take away all memory, beliefs, and all thought.
And notice what is left.
What is left is simply Awareness.
“If someone were to draw our attention to the white paper on which these words are
written, we would suddenly become aware of it. In fact, we were always aware of
the paper but we didn’t realise it due to the exclusive focus of our attention on the
words. Awareness is like the white paper.”
Just like the white paper, Awareness is always present in the background of our life.
We usually give our exclusive attention to our mind and thoughts and our body and
sensations, because they’re very attention grabbing. But we could not experience the
mind and its thoughts or the body and its sensations without Awareness to be aware
of them, just as we could not see any words if it were not for the background of the
paper the words were printed on.
“Give your attention to this background, even a little, and you will discover a whole
new world.”
Hale Dwoskin
“Awareness is the most obvious element of experience and yet the most
overlooked.”
“The subtle thing that is overlooked is that everything is known directly by
awareness, but it’s assumed that everything is coming in through the mind. For
instance, the common thing would be to say, ‘I think,’ but actually, if it’s looked at
carefully, it’s noticed that there is an awareness of thinking . . . so the thinking isn’t
who you are; there’s something that is aware of thinking.”
The one that is looking out through your eyes is Awareness! The one that is hearing
through your ears is Awareness! Without Awareness you wouldn’t be aware of
anything you see, hear, taste, smell, or touch, and you would have no experience of
the information coming in through your senses. Your senses aren’t aware; it’s
Awareness that’s aware of all of your senses.
“The apparatus with which we see is by itself inert, unable to see. A telescope is
useless without an astronomer behind it. It doesn’t see anything by itself. Likewise,
the apparatus of mind doesn’t see anything by itself.”
Francis Lucille, from The Perfume of Silence

“You are the Awareness that is aware of everything.”
David Bingham
“This individual consciousness—our feeling ‘I am a person, a separate individual, a
mind or soul confined within the limits of a body’—is merely an imagination, a
false and distorted form of our pure consciousness ‘I am,’ but it is nevertheless the
root cause of all desire and all misery.”
“The ‘me’ that we imagine we are is just another thought.”
Kalyani Lawry
“Our real nature, the infinite real self that we are, is simply us minus the mind.”
Our mind distorts the world we see by layering veils of thought and belief, one over
the top of each other. Each mental veil distorts the world further and prevents us
from seeing everything the way it really is.
“The mind will never discover who you are because the mind is the cover-up of who
you are. It’s only by letting go of the mind that you will discover who you are.”
Trying to see the truth with your mind is like trying to see something with a
blindfold on. You need to drop the blindfold to see, just as you need to drop the
mind to see who you really are.
“Attempting to understand consciousness with your mind is like trying to illuminate
the sun with a candle.”
Without even realizing it, most of us are constantly focused on the noise of thoughts
coming from our mind. Awareness is always present, but when there’s a break from
the noise of thoughts, it’s much easier to notice it. When thoughts stop, we become
consciously aware of Awareness, which has been existing silently in the background
all along.

The Mind’s Cover-Up
“We’re so used to knowing ourselves through our troubles, our dramas, and our
obsessions that awake awareness, which is our true nature and our basic goodness, is
hard to accept as our true identity.”
Loch Kelly, from Shift into Freedom
“Awake Awareness” is the name that Loch Kelly uses for Awareness, and it is just
one of the many different names used by teachers past and present to describe what
you are: Awareness, Awake Awareness, Consciousness, Cosmic Consciousness,
Being, Buddha Nature, Christ Consciousness, God Consciousness, Spirit, the Self,
Infinite Being, Infinite Intelligence, Unlimited Being, True Nature, True Self,
Presence of God, Presence, Presence Awareness, Pure Consciousness, Pure
Awareness, and many others. All these words are describing exactly the same thing
—the Awareness that you are.
“We’re so smart and our lives are so complex that it’s hard to believe that simply
discovering awake awareness could be the solution to our suffering. It’s also hard to
believe that the most important discovery is already here within us; we don’t have to
go on an odyssey to find it, earn it, or develop it.”
Loch Kelly, from Shift into Freedom
“The great joke is the simplicity of it all.”
Peter Lawry
It’s a great joke because what we truly are, what is closer to us than our very breath,
has eluded the majority of humans for thousands of years.
We’ve missed the simplest, most wonderful discovery because our thoughts have a
hypnotic effect on us that keeps us in our head, oblivious to Awareness. We usually
give our attention exclusively to the thoughts in our mind and to everything we
perceive through our senses, and with our attention diverted we miss what is always
present—Awareness.
“There is nothing wrong with the body or the mind. The only problem is that we
identify our witnessing presence, consciousness, with them. As long as we identify
this witnessing presence with the body and the mind, there is no room for this
presence to reveal itself in all its glory.”
“For a moment, take off the persona. It’s just an item of clothing, threadbare, stained
with years of wear and tear.”
Pamela Wilson
“To believe that our Self—luminous, open, empty Awareness—shares the limits and
the destiny of the mind and body is like believing that the screen shares the limits
and destiny of a character in a movie.”
Rupert Spira, from The Ashes of Love
“People think they are a human being, but they’re the Infinite Being. They’ve
mistaken their identity, but who they really are has never left them and is always
present.”
David Bingham

Your mind appears only when you have a thought, and it disappears after the
thought has ended. But Awareness never appears and disappears. Awareness is
always present, even when you’re asleep. It feels like Awareness disappears when
you go to sleep and appears again when you wake, and yet you know when you’ve
had a great night’s sleep because you say something like, “I slept really well. I slept
like a baby.” How do you know that you slept like a baby? You know it because
Awareness was aware and present the entire time you were sleeping.
When you ask yourself the question, “Am I aware?” immediately Awareness is
noticed. It didn’t appear; it was always present. You simply took your attention from
thinking and put it on Awareness, and so you became consciously aware.
Everything other than Awareness eventually ends or dies. Without exception, all
material earthly things come and go, appear and disappear. Every single thing on
earth—bodies, cities, countries, oceans—appears and eventually disappears. Take a
moment to think about it, and you’ll see that nothing remains. It’s all temporary,
even planet earth itself, the sun, the solar system, even universes. Nothing is here
forever, except for one thing—Awareness. You, Awareness, are here forever!
Our bodies age, yet when people get older they’ll say they don’t feel they’ve aged,
and that they feel the same as they always have. They’ll admit that their body feels
older, but the one they feel themselves to be deep down doesn’t feel like it has aged
at all. Without realizing it, they are sensing the timeless Awareness that they really
are.
“When you remember your past, your childhood, who is it that remembers? I
remember. ‘I’ is that which knows the experience, remembers the experience.”
The “I” that we call ourselves at five years old, fifteen years old, thirty years old,
and sixty years old is the ageless Awareness that has witnessed our entire life.
Five years old: “I . . . am going to school soon.”
Fifteen years old: “I . . . can’t wait to graduate.”
Thirty years old: “I . . . just got engaged.”
Sixty years old: “I . . . am not ready for retirement yet.”
“Self-realization is to see that the changing appearances on the surface of life are
arising within the permanent, ever-stable Awareness that one truly is and has only
ever been.”
“This is not a fairy tale. This possible thing is as real as a tree, as real as politics, as
the roots that hold the tree to the ground, as real as the newspaper and its stories. It
is as real as the Red Sox, as the price of gas, as a fight with your in-laws, as real as a
tuition bill . . . The truth is, it is more real than these things, and yet it is hardly seen,
hardly felt, let alone directly known.”

“There is not one of us who is not in direct touch with, in possession of, an infinite
Beingness that’s all perfect, all present, all joyous and eternal. There is not one of us
who is not in direct contact with That right now! But due to wrong learning, by
assuming, over the ages, concepts of limitation and by looking outwardly, we have
beclouded the view. We have covered over this Infinite Being that we are with
concepts of, ‘I am this physical body,’ or, ‘I am this mind,’ or, ‘With this physical
body and mind, I have heaps and heaps of problems and troubles.’”
“This is the same state that most religions refer to as ‘liberation’ or ‘salvation,’
because only in this state of true self-knowledge are we free or saved from the
bondage of mistaking ourself to be a separate individual, a consciousness that is
confined within the limits of a physical body.”
Consciousness or Awareness is also known by some religions as the presence of
God. When a person has a divine experience—an experience where they feel they
were touched by God—the individual mind and ego drop, which then reveals
Awareness, or the presence of God. There is a feeling of pure love, infinite peace,
beauty, happiness, and bliss, which cannot be mistaken for anything but divinity.
“In reality, we are the Infinite Being rather than the human being. We are the Infinite
Being, having a human experience.”
David Bingham
In many ways, the truth of life and of ourselves is actually the complete opposite to
what we have been taught. Instead of looking out ward to the world for happiness,

for fulfillment, for answers and truth, we need to turn and look inward, because it’s
only in that direction that we will find everything we’re looking for. Our
breathtaking world, and everything in it, is meant to be enjoyed to the fullest, but the
happiness, joy, love, peace, intelligence, and freedom that are Awareness—your
very nature—can only be found within you.

CHAPTER 2 Summary
A single belief has prevented us from making the greatest
discovery—the belief that we are our body and our mind.
You are not your body; your body is a vehicle you use to
experience the world. Your body isn’t conscious.
Believing you’re your body creates the biggest fear of
humanity, the fear of death.
What you actually are never dies.
You are not your mind; mind is only thoughts. If there are no
thoughts, then there is no mind.
You are not a thought, a sensation, or a feeling, because if
you were, when they end you would end too.
Your body and mind together make up what we call a
person—the imagined self.
A person is what you experience, it is not what you are.
We can never have true lasting happiness while we hold on
to the belief that we’re a person.
You are experiencing a body, experiencing a mind, and
having the experience of being a person, but they are not
you.
We’re pretending we’re a small, limited person through
constant thoughts of limitation.
Who you really are is unlimited, which means absolutely
nothing has power over you.
You’ve been aware your entire life; Awareness is and has
been the only constant in your life.

That awareness is who you really are. You are awareness.
You couldn’t know or experience any of life without
awareness.
It’s not the mind or the body that is aware of your life.
Awareness is what is aware of every single life experience
you have.
Imagine you have no body or mind, name, life story, past,
memory, beliefs, or thought. What is left is Awareness.
We usually give our attention exclusively to thoughts and to
everything we perceive, so we miss what is always present—
Awareness.
Awareness is present even when you’re asleep.
When you ask yourself the question, “Am I aware?”
immediately awareness is noticed. It didn’t appear; it was
always present.
Everything other than awareness eventually ends or dies.
The “I” that we call ourselves at every age is the ageless
“I” of Awareness, which has witnessed our entire life.
Instead of looking outward to the world for happiness, we
need to turn and look inward; it’s only in that direction that
we will find everything we’re looking for.

Chapter 3
The Reveal Continued
You are Awareness; you’re not a person being aware of something. You are
Infinite Awareness itself.
As Francis Lucille said, a telescope is just an instrument without the astronomer
looking through it. Your body and mind are instruments too. And so what’s
looking through your eyes? You, Awareness! What’s hearing sounds? You,
Awareness! Your body is alive because of Awareness—Awareness is actually
the life force that animates your body.
“The fundamental mistake is to believe a human being is experiencing
awareness. This is not correct. Only awareness is aware, and therefore only
awareness can experience awareness. When I ask you, ‘Are you aware?,’ you
will pause to check your experience and you will answer, ‘Yes.’ That ‘yes’ is an
affirmation of awareness’s awareness of itself. It is not a body or a brain that
experiences being aware. The body and brain are experienced; they don’t
experience.”
Rupert Spira, from the talk “The Light of Consciousness”
There Is Only One: Our Name Is “I”
“Only awareness is aware. Human beings aren’t aware. Dogs and cats aren’t
aware. Animals aren’t aware. Only awareness is aware. There is only one
awareness, just as there is only one space in the universe. That awareness is
refracted in each of our minds and, as a result, each of our minds seems to have
its own package of awareness, just as every building seems to contain its own
space. But the awareness with which each of our minds is aware of its
experience is the only awareness there is, infinite awareness, just as the space in
all buildings is the same space.”
Rupert Spira, from the talk “Awareness Is the Only Aware Entity in Existence”
This Infinite Awareness—this one and only Awareness—is you, and every other
person! There is only one Awareness, and it’s the same Awareness that is
operating through everybody. There is just one of us. Our name is “I.”

“There is only one ‘I,’ and you are It, as everyone is It.”
David Bingham
It’s the one Awareness operating through every living form. All the physical
forms are simply different vehicles for the one glorious, Infinite Awareness.
This is the true meaning of the teaching, “We are one.”
Consciousness and Awareness are different words used to describe the same
thing. They both describe you.
“This very ordinary consciousness, which is hearing these words right this
moment, and understanding them, happens to be also the divine consciousness
that lives all lives. There is not a single separate entity in the entire cosmos.”
Francis Lucille, from Truth Love Beauty
“We are One. There is only one in us. There is only one as us.”
It’s a little like the trillions of individual cells living, working, and operating in
your body. Unbeknownst to each of the individual cells, they are really part of
the one human being. There are billions of beings in the world, operating as
individuals, and unbeknownst to most of them, they’re the one and only Infinite
Being.
“We have been taught to believe that this consciousness is personal and limited,
and that each person is endowed with a private and separate consciousness, so
that there are many consciousnesses. We have never considered that while it is
easy to verify that two objects are separate, because it is possible to see their
borders and limits, it is not possible to find any border or limit to
consciousness.”
If there’s only one Awareness or Consciousness, why aren’t you aware of
thoughts or sensations in other people’s bodies? Or of what an animal in Africa
is seeing or hearing? It’s because Awareness or Consciousness has been
funneled through your mind, making it localized to your body. Plus, the belief
that you’re a separate individual prevents you from experiencing the full
expansiveness of Awareness. But when you feel compassion or love for
another, you are far more tuned in to the one Awareness than you might have
realized.
We’ve all had glimpses in our life of the Awareness that we are, but more often
than not we passed them off as something we imagined or a trick of the mind.
Whether we remember them or not, we’ve had experiences that we can’t
explain, very often when we were children. It may have been an experience
where you felt you expanded to be really big, and felt like the world was within
you, or maybe you saw or heard something that no one else could see or hear.
Children are more tuned in to Awareness because their mind hasn’t yet covered
Awareness over with a whole array of mental concepts and beliefs. Under the
age of two and a half, children are pure, simple Awareness. They don’t have the
experience of being separate, which is why they refer to themselves in the third
person. On seeing herself in a photograph, two-year-old Sarah will point and

say, “That’s Sarah!” She won’t say, “That’s me,” because she’s not yet
experiencing herself as a “me,” a separate person. Her experience is that there’s
only One and she is it, and everyone else is it.
“There’s nothing out there but our consciousness. There’s only one
consciousness and we’re it.”
Awareness or Consciousness is all through your body and everywhere outside
your body; Awareness can’t be contained within your body because Awareness
is formless. It would be like trying to contain space in a jar; of course, space is
both inside the jar and everywhere outside the jar. In fact, the jar is in space,
just as all bodies are in Awareness. Absolutely everything is contained in
Awareness, and it’s the reason why the enlightened beings’ experience of life is
that they are everything—because they are everything. And as Awareness, so
are you!
“Behind your eyes is the same consciousness, the only consciousness that is
behind Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, and behind all eyes.”
My teacher
Think about that. Your Consciousness is the same Consciousness as all of the
great beings; that’s how close you are to them. They are not at a distance from
you. You are one with them.
“The mystery, the magic of it is that this ordinary consciousness that we take
for granted, even as far as denying its existence, happens to be the
consciousness of the universe itself, its true center.”
How to Stay as Awareness
There’s no process to become the Awareness that you are; it’s not something
you have to attain. This is not something that certain people have and you don’t
have. You are already it, right now. You may have overlooked it, and you may
have believed all your life that you were just a person, but that doesn’t alter the
fact of what you actually are.
“You can lose everything else, but you can never lose the awareness that you
are.”
Mooji, from Vaster Than Sky, Greater Than Space
When a human being lives from the place of knowing they’re Infinite
Awareness, then the experience of living in the material world becomes
breathtaking. Because their mind has dropped to the back ground and
Awareness is in the foreground, they are no longer subject to the turmoil of the
mind, so they are lighthearted, happy all the time, and laugh a lot. They’re
existing in pure happiness and bliss and living their lives from that place every
day. Problems are virtually nonexistent, everything dreamed of comes to them,
and because they’re consciously living as Awareness, they’re fully aware of
their immortality. They know they are everything, and yet they know they’re
not affected by anything. Life on earth doesn’t get any better than this!

“Every little thing you do or see—every little, ordinary thing—carries this
tingly sense of being. It is hard not to cry sometimes at the most unspectacular
things. The lines of the walls in relation to the flat of the floor. Its horizontality.
The nap of the rug. The sound of the car going by. The smell of the skin on
your arm. All is miraculous.”
But you have to experience it for yourself. Hearing it from someone else is a
guide, pointing you in the right direction. It’s like a travel agent describing
Mount Everest. You can’t know what Mount Everest is like until you get there
and experience it for yourself—only then will you know.
“It is actually impossible not to remain as this open space of consciousness.
However, to be it knowingly is a different matter.”
“You cannot be out of awareness—it is missed simply through the habit of
placing the attention in the thinking.”
Peter Lawry
We can put our attention either on the thoughts in our head or on the Awareness
that we are. It’s a simple shift of your attention. Put your attention on
Awareness as often as you can rather than giving your attention to thinking, and
you will be on your way to absolute freedom and bliss.
The Awareness Practice—Three Steps
to Bliss
The Awareness Practice is what I use and continue to practice to consciously
stay as Awareness. This practice is not to become Awareness, because you’re

that already. It’s so you can live your life consciously as the Awareness that you
are. It’s just three simple steps to a life of total freedom and lasting, blissful
happiness.
Step 1. Ask yourself, “Am I aware?”
Step 2. Notice Awareness.
Step 3. Stay as Awareness.
Step 1. Ask Yourself, “Am I Aware?”
Don’t try to answer the question with your mind; thoughts cannot help you
experience Awareness. Each time you ask the question, your attention will be
taken away from thinking and the mind and put on Awareness. When you ask,
“Am I aware?” Awareness is present instantly. The mind may come in quickly
afterward with a thought, but if it does, simply ask the question again. The
more you ask the question, the longer you will remain as Awareness, and the
quieter your thoughts and your mind will become.
“Notice that the mind, in all its changes, has a changeless background.”
Hale Dwoskin
After asking, “Am I aware?” the first thing you’ll likely feel is a sense of relief
as any resistance you are holding in the mind and body starts to melt away.
After repeatedly asking the question, over time the feeling of relief will turn
into a subtle feeling of peaceful happiness. You may feel a sense of serenity, as
your mind becomes quiet. You may feel currents of joy running through the
area around your heart.
The relief you feel is due to your mind falling into the background. The longer
the mind remains in the background, with Awareness present in the foreground,
the greater the relief, and the more happiness you will begin to feel. Bliss
comes when Awareness remains permanently in the foreground, and the mind is
delegated to its rightful place.
Remember, Awareness is formless, so it’s not something you can hold on to. It’s
like love. You know love exists, but can you hold on to it? You can feel the
sensations of love in your heart, but you can’t grasp it in your hand. It’s the
same with Awareness. You will feel the sensations of relief and happiness in
your body from Awareness, but you can’t grasp it or hold on to it.
It can seem difficult to consciously stay as Awareness in the beginning, because
of the habit of thinking.
“As soon as this is noticed, we may ask again, ‘Am I Aware?,’ in this way
inviting the mind away from the objects of knowledge or experience, towards
its essence or source.”
The way to break the habit of incessant thinking is by being the Infinite
Awareness that you are. You can’t use the mind to stop the mind and break the
habit of thinking. It’s the reason many people fail at meditation, because they’re

trying to use the mind to quiet the mind, instead of allowing the thoughts to
come and go without giving them any attention.
For most people there’s virtually no relief from their mind because it’s
constantly throwing up one thought after another, and they don’t realize they
can remove their attention from their thoughts. Freedom from the mind is such
a glorious relief, and it comes when you can observe thoughts rather than being
lured into following them and believing them.
Step 2. Notice Awareness
In a relatively short time of practicing step 1, you’ll get to the point where you
automatically notice Awareness. You won’t need to ask, “Am I aware?”
anymore, because in the moment you think of Awareness, instantly Awareness
will be in the foreground and your mind will recede into the background.
“Allow the experience of being aware to come into the foreground of
experience, and let thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and perceptions
recede into the background. Simply notice the experience of being aware. The
peace and happiness for which all people long reside there.”
Shift your attention to Awareness by noticing Awareness multiple times
throughout the day. It won’t be long before you feel a sense of exquisite relief
and happiness each time you return from the turmoil of the mind to the deep
peace of Awareness.
“There’s a fork in every moment. To be what you are or what you are not.
You’re choosing in every second.”
My teacher
If you feel like your mind is covering Awareness, or you feel like you’ve lost it
and you can’t get it back, ask yourself, “What is aware that Awareness is lost?”
It’s Awareness that’s aware of it! And with that, you will be aware of
Awareness.
If you don’t think you’ve been able to discover Awareness yet, ask yourself,
“What is aware that I haven’t discovered Awareness?” It’s Awareness that’s
aware of that too! And now you’re aware of Awareness.
“You are already awareness itself, not the one trying to be aware.”
Mooji
Are you aware of your body right now? It’s Awareness that’s aware of your
body. Are you aware of the seat you’re sitting on? It’s Awareness that’s aware
of the seat. Are you aware of your breathing? It’s Awareness that’s aware of
your breathing. It’s that simple.
“Whenever you think of it, bring yourself back to the awareness of now. Do it
hundreds of times each day, because, remember, all of your power is in your
awareness of your power.”
From The Secret

Step 3. Stay as Awareness
“In the beginning you feel like a visitor to awareness, but as you keep
discovering the realness of it, any sense of fear or separation melts away.”
Mooji
Staying as Awareness is all about where you put your attention. My teacher
suggests a simple way to think about this. Our mind operates in a similar way to
the lens on a camera. The mind has an automatic zoom function, and it focuses
our attention on things in detail, just as you would zoom in with a camera lens
for a close-up. The majority of the time the mind is zoomed in and we are
seeing the world through focused attention, which results in a very narrow and
distorted perspective of the world. But when you want to take a photograph of a
wide-open space, you zoom out and open the lens as wide as you can for a
wide-angle shot. In the same way, if you open your attention wide so you’re not
focused on any detail anymore, Awareness is revealed. It’s a simple way to stay
as Awareness and let everything be just as it is.
To put this into practice, take a look around you right now, find something close
up to focus on, and focus your attention on only that. You can use your hand if
you want. Now open your attention so it’s very wide, taking in as much as
possible of your surroundings without focusing on anything in particular.
Notice an immediate sense of relief and relaxation in the body. This happens
because our mind is constantly focused, and it takes a lot of effort to maintain
that focus. So, when you open your attention to be as wide and open as
possible, our mind dissolves into the background and Awareness comes into the
foreground. You feel a sense of relief because Awareness is effortless; it sees
and knows everything without any need to focus.
“The one that you’ve mistaken yourself for that wants to make things happen
has zero power. Yet it’s saying, ‘I need to take care of some things.’ It’s
Awareness that takes care of everything.”
My teacher
“The less you believe you are the doer the more you are an unstoppable force
for good in the world.”
Hale Dwoskin
I used to be a big doer. I prided myself on my doing capabilities, juggling
multiple things at one time. It became my identity. I was the Queen of Doing!
And so of course the Universe flowed an unending number of things for me to
do, because of what I believed about myself.
But that has all changed because of continually letting go of what I believed
myself to be, and staying as the Awareness that I am. I’m not only happier than
I’ve ever been, but instead of doing, doing, doing all the time, things just seem
to get taken care of naturally, without me doing them. If I do end up doing
something, it’s like I’m not even doing it it’s so effortless. Life becomes
miraculous!
Give five minutes a day, at the very least, to putting your attention on
Awareness. You can do it when you first wake up, when you get into bed, or at

any other time that suits you. If you are as dedicated as I am to having a
miraculous life, you will give your attention to Awareness more often, but even
five minutes a day will make an enormous difference to your life. It’s that easy.
Remember, this is not a practice to become Awareness, because you are Infinite
Awareness already. Rather it’s a practice that stops you from identifying
yourself with the mind and body, which is not who you are.
“To begin with it seems like an effort to keep returning to the welcoming
presence, but at some point, it is so natural that it seems to require an effort to
leave it. It feels like home.”
You will reach a point where you know with certainty that you are in the realm
of divinity, or for those who prefer to use the word “God,” in the presence of
God. To be in the presence of God or the realm of divinity is to be beyond the
mind.
“When you lose the eyes of ego you see with the eyes of God.”
Mooji
After doing these steps for a while, you’ll discover that Awareness
automatically becomes more dominant and present within you, and your mind
becomes much quieter. Other indications of how you are doing are: your life
will become easier and more effortless, you’ll feel more peaceful, things that
used to bother you won’t bother you anymore, you’ll feel calmer, your
emotions will be more stable, and you’ll find you’re not easily swept away with
negative emotions. In fact, you will begin to feel a sense of happiness that
you’ve not felt before. You’ll become more acutely aware of your mind’s
propensity to complain, criticize, and focus on negativity. And you’ll find
you’re not giving your mind power over you like you used to, because you’ve
taken your attention away from your thoughts.
“Knowing that we are the perfect Self, that we are not this limited body and
mind, all problems immediately resolve.”
Awareness is greater than every single thing it’s aware of. The person is limited,
but Awareness is unlimited, which means everything is possible. Nothing can
ever restrict you; nothing whatsoever has power over you!
“We seem to have the experience of a limited consciousness but when we
investigate more closely, we see that it is impossible. That which is aware of
limitations transcends limitations and is therefore beyond them.”
Nothing can disturb Awareness! No number of problems can disrupt you.
Negativity can’t touch you. Wars can’t affect you. You as Awareness are always
safe and well. You are untouchable, unharmable, imperishable. What would
there be to threaten you? You contain everything. You are everything. To the
best of your ability, begin to stay as the Awareness that you are by putting your
attention on Awareness often, so you can live a wondrous life.

“Then you can no more be fooled by the apparent limitations of the world. You
see them as a dream, as an appearance, because you know that your very own
Beingness has no limits.”

CHAPTER 3 Summary
You are Awareness; you’re not a person being aware of
something.
A telescope is just an instrument without the astronomer
looking through it, and your body and mind are instruments
of Awareness.
There is only one awareness, and it’s the same awareness
that is operating through everybody.
You aren’t aware of thoughts or sensations in another
person’s body because Awareness has been funneled
through your mind, making it localized to your body.
Awareness or consciousness is all through your body and
everywhere outside your body.
We can put our attention either on the thoughts in our head
or on the Awareness that we are. Put your attention on
Awareness as often as you can.
The Awareness Practice
Step 1. Ask yourself, “Am I aware?”
Step 2. Notice Awareness.
Step 3. Stay as Awareness.
The way to break the mind’s habit of nonstop thinking once
and for all is to stay as the Awareness that you are.
Shift your attention to Awareness by noticing Awareness
multiple times throughout the day.
A simple way to stay as Awareness: Open your attention
wide like the lens on a camera so you’re not focused on any
detail anymore, and Awareness is revealed.

To practice, find something close up to focus on, and focus
your attention on only that. Now open your attention so it’s
very wide, taking in as much as possible of your
surroundings without focusing on anything in particular.

Chapter 4
You’re Dreaming . . . It’s Time to
Wake Up
According to many spiritual teachers and ancient traditions, our entire world,
your life and everyone else’s life, is nothing more than a dream. They don’t
say that our world and everything in it is like a dream, but that it is literally
made from the same substance as our dreams and is equally as illusory. When
you are permanently staying as Awareness, you will know for certain that
your life and the world are not the reality you thought they were: they are a
dream.
“This life is a dream; we’re dreaming we’re a person living in a world that we
are convinced is real. We don’t realize it’s all a dream. The whole world as
now seen is nothing but a dream-illusion that never was. The truth is just
behind the outward world.”
“We should be open to the possibility that this is a dream and when we do,
everything changes dramatically. It actually turns out to be so. If this waking
experience is seen to be a dream, then our behavior changes and we will find
that the response coming from the characters or the situation in this dream
also changes.”
“We are right now in a lucid dream. And part of the dream is that which we
call mind, body, and universe.”
“And the dream is seamless so it’s virtually impossible for people to wake
up.”
My teacher
In your night dreams your mind creates your body, other people (some you
know, some you don’t know), cities, towns, houses, vehicles, food, objects,
trees, nature, animals, the sun, stars, and sky. It also creates time passing,

daytime, nighttime, voices, sounds, and every circumstance and event that
takes place in your dream. Your mind creates an entire world, it creates a
dream version of you, and it makes everything seem so real that you don’t
even question it—until you wake up! Only then do you realize it was a dream.
“You probably have noticed one of the main things about a dream. Virtually
always, the “you” in the dream doesn’t realize it’s a dream. That’s the ironic
thing about dreaming. The characters in a dream automatically assume they
are wide awake! The dream characters are not awake. The dream experiences
are not real. But in the dream, none of that has been noticed. Notice
something else about a dream. As far as the dream characters are concerned,
there is nothing beyond the dream. The dream characters have no idea that
there is another, real kind of awakeness. A dream character has no idea of
what it’s missing.”
Peter Dziuban, from Simply Notice
“While we are subjected to the night dream, everything seems to be real. If we
see a tiger, we are afraid because we don’t know that we are creating the tiger.
If we knew that we couldn’t possibly be afraid, could we? This demonstrates
that an illusion can seem to be quite real while we are subjected to it, even
though, when we become aware of its illusory nature, we understand that it
was we who were creating it all along.”
Even if you’re fully aware that the world is a dream, you still remain
respectful of its physicality, and of your physical body. You don’t go and jump
off a building, because the building, the ground, your body, and gravity are all
made of the same dream stuff, and you will feel it! As one teacher said, if you
come up and pinch me in a dream, I will feel it, because it’s a dream pinch!

“In a dream, ten years may pass by in one minute. You may have a baby and
then be taking it, as a child, to school. When you wake up, you see that the
body in the dream was an illusion, and the time to which it was subjected was
also an illusion, but from the vantage point of the dream, it seemed to be real.”
“If we take the dream state as an example, there may be a dream that covers a
fifty-year period, but we wake up and realize that it didn’t actually happen. It
only seemed real while there was identification with the dream state of
consciousness. The waking state is also only an extremely convincing play
that consciousness is producing.”
“The laws of physics are the laws that apply to this waking dream. During
night dreams, the laws of physics are different. That is why you can fly at
night!”
No matter what takes place in the “earth” dream, the end is the same for all of
us: we wake up to discover that it was all a dream! This is why we’re told by
spiritual teachers to “wake up.” It means waking up from the illusion and
realizing that it’s all a dream. When we wake up to the truth, we discover that
no one was ever hurt or harmed, and no one died; just like when you wake up
terrorized following a nightmare, and you realize with relief that no one was
actually hurt and nothing bad happened, it was just a dream.
“If you can go to a movie and see a picture of war and suffering, and
afterward say ‘What a wonderful picture!’ so may you take this life as a
cosmic picture-show. Be prepared for every kind of experience that may come
to you, realizing that all are but dreams.”
Paramahansa Yogananda, from Man’s Eternal Quest
“Seeing the world as a dream is a great practice, and it will help break its
apparent solidity.”
Francis Lucille
Waking Up
“The greatest healing is to wake up from what we are not.”
Mooji
“It’s like shifting your eyes from one thing to a different thing. It’s that subtle.
It’s like exhaling. When you’re ready, you’ll do it. Don’t tell yourself you’ll
never be ready. Don’t tell yourself it’s not possible. It’s happening all around
you, to people just like you. They aren’t troubled anymore. They used to be.
They are still living their lives. They are brimming in joy. They live lives of
ease, no matter what is going on. Don’t be jealous of them. Don’t doubt them.
Become that way yourself. You will rejoice. You will not be able to
understand why you let yourself continue so long the other way.”

I can say with absolute certainty that I was asleep for several decades of my
life. I know I was asleep because I can pinpoint the exact day, the exact
moment, and the exact circumstance when I first woke up! Since then I have
had lots of small awakenings, and another major awakening. Awakening is
like coming out of a fog, when suddenly it clears, and you can see everything
clearly.
Some people have woken up lying on a couch, walking through a parking lot
to their car, hearing the sound of a bird or something a teacher says, or reading
something in particular. Many have woken up in the midst of a terrifying
event, or during a personal crisis when their life had hit rock bottom. And for
all of them, it was only when they woke up that they realized—they were
asleep.
“Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born
asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their
sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They live mechanical
lives, mechanical thoughts—generally somebody else’s—mechanical
emotions, mechanical actions, mechanical reactions. They never understand
the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence.”
Our mind is mechanical, like a program in a computer, so if we’re governed
by our mind, then our life is mechanical. Maybe you continually find yourself
with not enough money. This is the result of a mechanical mind repeating the
same thoughts of “not enough money” over and over again. You empower
those thoughts by believing them, and so you continue to experience not
having enough money. This is the work of the mind’s limiting thoughts, while
Awareness is absolute abundance.
When you wake up and begin living your life as Awareness, your life will be
beyond anything you can imagine now. You will find the world utterly
magnificent, bursting with beauty and loveliness, and you will see with clear
eyes that everything is on track, nothing is out of place, and all is well. When
our mind is running our life, we’re prevented from seeing the world as it
really is.
The egoic mind takes issue with most things and objects to them vehemently.
Through its ego-centeredness and inability to see the full picture, it will judge,
criticize, and find fault, and due to its limited perspective of life, it must
perceive problems.
“Waking up is unpleasant, you know. You are nice and comfortable in bed. It
is irritating to be woken up. That’s the reason the wise guru will not attempt to
wake people up. I hope I’m going to be wise here and make no attempt
whatsoever to wake you up if you are asleep. It is really none of my business,
even though I say to you at times, ‘Wake up!’”
There’s one purpose in life for every one of us—to wake up to who we are,
Awareness, and enjoy this incredible spectacle of the world. When you wake

up, you will be in the world but not of the world, which means you will be
completely free from the challenges of the world.
As I outlined in the three-step Awareness Practice in the previous chapter,
after you’ve woken up to the truth of Awareness, the final step is to stay
consciously as Awareness and not be pulled back into the mind and the ego.
Some people wake up suddenly and stay that way permanently, and for others
awakening seems to be a process. Everyone, however, says that the process of
awakening continues to deepen with no end.
“It isn’t any longer possible to say—this is about saints, this is about Zen
monks, this is something you must wait lifetimes to have. Or—this is for
serious spiritual practitioners, or for people who don’t revel in the physical
life, or for people who believe a certain way . . . Know that you can go there,
can be there, can live a life that is unencumbered. You do not have to earn
this, or deserve it. It’s free, already here. It isn’t a reward. It’s innate.”
Waking up to who you really are is the way out of all negativity and the way
to permanent happiness. It is the destiny of every human on earth. It is your
destiny. You can make it your life now!
The Mountain of Consciousness
Many years ago, the Imperator of the European Rose Cross Order shared a
metaphor to help me understand the levels of Consciousness and Awareness.
He called it “the mountain of consciousness.”
If you’re at the base of the mountain in the valley, you can’t see very far. Your
perspective is narrow and limited, and you can’t see what’s ahead of you or
what’s around any corner. Because you don’t know what’s beyond the valley,
there is a great fear of the unknown.
As you climb the mountain, you begin to notice changes. Your perspective of
life expands as you get higher, because you can see farther and you can see
past some of the things that were blocking your view at the bottom of the
mountain. Things look different a little higher up because you can see them
more clearly, and while still fearful, you’re not nearly as fearful as you were
in the valley.
Higher again up the mountain, the atmosphere is different, the vegetation is
different, and you can see much farther than you could be fore. Life looks
very different here, and because you can now see a lot of things that were
hidden from you before, your fear of the unknown is diminishing.

When you reach the top of the mountain, you can see everything in all
directions. Nothing whatsoever is hidden from you. Your vision of the world
and beyond is fully expanded in every direction. You can see the people in the
valley and their limited perspective, and you know from where you are that
there’s nothing for them to fear. You can also see the people who are at
various stages on their way up the mountain, and the various limitations of
their perspective. And where you stand, at the top of the mountain, you can
see the sheer exquisite beauty and perfection of absolutely everything. You
see that nothing is out of place, and there’s nothing for anyone to worry about,
or be afraid of. The spectacle, the wonder, and the mystery of life that is
revealed to you is nothing short of magnificent, and when the people in the
valley can see the magnificence of what you can see, they also will be free.
“When we stand on top of a mountain or look at the stars we are sensing
infinity, which is what we truly are, and why so many people crave that sense
of expansiveness.”
David Bingham
“At a higher level of consciousness, none of this personal mind stuff matters
at all, for you are standing on the mountaintop of your own being, and all
below you are clouds passing. You come to a point where nothing matters at
all! Nothing, nothing, nothing! And all is perfection only.”
Now that you know who you are, you have begun the awakening process! The
only obstacle to permanently being who you are is your mind. Your mind is
your greatest power in the material world, because it will generate any
material thing, event, or circumstance you want, but if you believe its negative
thoughts, you will use its creative power against yourself. There’s nothing
wrong with the mind, it only becomes troublesome when you believe it’s who
you are.
When your mind tries to speak on your behalf, remember that the voice you
hear in your head is not you. Your mind is not even an actual entity, but a

process—a mechanical process. It’s just made up of thoughts, and the
thoughts it produces are coming from programs formed by your beliefs and
held in your subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is the storehouse of
our beliefs, memory, personality traits, automatic processes, and habits, and
its operation is no different from that of a computer; it’s completely
mechanical.
Your subconscious mind receives information from the conscious mind, which
is your thinking mind, and it accepts all the data that the thinking mind puts
into it. The subconscious mind doesn’t discriminate with any of the
information coming into it, but instead accepts everything that the thinking
mind believes is true.
So basically our mind recycles thoughts according to our beliefs and holds us
prisoner with those thoughts by severely limiting our life—until we wake up
and see that our thoughts and our mind are not who we are!
“Would you rather play the game of limitation or would you rather be free?
That simple question is a key to dropping our obsession with being limited
body-minds. If you think you are your body-mind and the stories that you tell
yourself and others about being that body-mind, then you would rather play
the game of limitation.”
Hale Dwoskin, from Happiness Is Free
The first step to freedom is when we understand that our thoughts create our
life. What you think is what manifests. You won’t have the life you want if
you give your attention to thoughts of what you don’t want. And you will have
the life you want if you give your attention only to thoughts of what you do
want! When you understand this fully, you become very aware of your
thoughts, and it puts you well on the path of awakening, because your
awareness of your thoughts not only stops you from believing negative
thoughts, but it means you are becoming more aware.
The Secret book and documentary explain the power you have to create your
life on all subjects—health, relationships, money, work, happiness, and even
the world—through your thoughts. If you don’t yet understand the
phenomenal power you have through your thoughts, I urge you to get a copy
of The Secret, or borrow one from a friend or a library. The Secret has
changed the lives of tens of millions of people, and becoming more aware of
your thoughts is an excellent first step in the wonderful process of waking up
to what we really are.

CHAPTER 4 Summary
This life is a dream. The whole world is nothing but a
dream-illusion.
In your night dreams your mind creates an entire world and
makes everything so real that you don’t question it—until
you wake up.
The waking state is also only an extremely convincing play
that consciousness is producing.
Because the mind is mechanical, if we live from our mind,
our life is mechanical.
When our mind is running our life, we’re prevented from
seeing the world as it really is.
When you wake up, you will be in the world but not of the
world.
The Mountain of Consciousness is a metaphor for
consciousness: Your perspective of life expands as you get
higher. At the top of the mountain, you can see the beauty
and perfection of absolutely everything.
Your mind is made up of thoughts, and the thoughts it
produces are coming from programs formed by your beliefs
and held in your subconscious mind.
The subconscious mind stores our beliefs, memory,
personality traits, automatic processes, and habits; its
operation is no different from that of a computer.
The first step to freedom is when we understand that our
thoughts create our life. What you think is what manifests.

The greatest secret by rhonda byrne [english]

The greatest secret by rhonda byrne [english]

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